It wasn’t an easy transition for me. I came from a background where everything I was supposed to believe was rolled out like a red carpet for me. I only needed to dance.

I’m an awkward dancer. I’m six foot tall and my husband isn’t a party guy. I’d often find myself alone on the carpet trying to figure out the beat of the songs. When the kids came along, we’d ring-around-the-rosy every Sunday and be appeased with doughnuts and life groups, but in the end, I felt exhausted from my shimmying to something that I thought I was supposed to get but just didn’t.

When I started opening my mouth about my questions, I was shocked to find many people on the carpet had the same ones as I did, but they chose to accept what worked and moved on. I have zero disrespect for these people, it’s just not me. I am not one to go with the flow if I’m not comfortable. I had to, in the end, quietly leave. Much to my inner narcissist’s surprise, there was no banner shouting “Andrea has left the building!” Nope, not even a phone call or an email. I was either that much of a disappointment or not important enough. Either way, it was an immense relief. (If not a bit terrifying. Now what?)

My New Building

No one was more shocked than I was to find that at my new tiny church God showed up even more strongly than he had before. I felt a sense of peace and belonging I had not felt in years. It’s a place where, in true Rachel Held Evan’s style, we all are called to the communion table. We don’t have an agenda to push. We have only God’s love and grace to receive.

This kind of message seems radical and hippy dippy to many more conservative folk. But to me, it reminds me of Jesus: a rebellious conviction to love everyone. (Unfortunately this kind of acceptance got him killed. But I get it. He was no longer able to live with the hypocrites. And that goes for me being able to live with my dual personality of wanting to fit a mold I just wasn’t cut out for.)

Getting clean with who I was felt so refreshing. But I had been warned about this kind of serenity before from my more conservative church: “It’s the devil.” And yet, having done an immense amount of spiritual work through 12 step, I knew this simply wasn’t true. In my 12 step, it is crystal clear that to not live a life of honesty and integrity is to drink, and to drink for many is to die. I was not willing to die in body or spirit. Instead, I chose surrender.

The Power of Surrender

I could go on and on about the power of surrender and what that means to an over-thinker like myself, but in a nutshell it means: I am not God, neither are you, how about we just lay down or guns and admit we don’t know everything? How about we let go and trust that each person has a God of their understanding to guide them to make decisions for themselves?

For me that is Jesus. But until he shows up at my door with a cappuccino and a doughnut, I’m not willing to tell all my other friends of faith that they are 100% wrong in who their higher power is and aren’t going to heaven “until they know the truth.” The path to destruction might be wide, and the road to salvation might be narrow, but that simply cannot be true of our hearts. Hell is happening NOW, with our minds too narrow and our compassion not wide enough. People are dying. People aren’t getting the healthcare they need. People are being sent to prison for making heart wrenching decisions for their children.

Surrender also means listening. In joining a new church, I asked question after question of my gay pastor. “How do you reconcile your sexuality with the Bible? How do you keep from creating a God of your own understanding?” These open questions and resulting communication was both scary and transforming. But in the mystery, like driving through fog, light came at the other side. In being patient in the dark, I felt more of God’s all encompassing love than I ever felt listening to straight up theology.

It also meant asking my friends about their feelings on abortion. I heard story after story about why they did, or did not, choose to terminate a pregnancy. Instead of feeling judgment or elation, I was led right back to surrender. And in doing so, I was overwhelmed again and again with the idea of dignity: That a woman must decide for herself what she can or cannot live with. That her life, and others’ lives, are as valuable as the one in their womb. And as painful as that is for me to admit to my inner evangelical, it’s what I believe now to be true. No one – especially a rich white man – gets to decide this.

I am not writing this to convince you on what you should or should not do with your life and your votes, especially if you disagree with me. But I am writing to you to consider asking yourself the very tough questions that I began asking myself a few years ago:

If your child came to you and told you he or she was gay, would you pound them with theology and Bible verses or would you wrap them in your arms and tell them you love them?

Do you really believe that everything written in that Bible is 100% without error? Because if you do, you have a lot of explaining to do. And if that explaining makes sense to you only from a place where, in our society today, straight white people win, would you consider that maybe, just maybe, it’s possible you are wanting to interpret something that best fits your view of the world versus real people with real struggles and needs?

Do you truly think that God stopped talking 2000 years ago when the Bible was shut and that we can’t possibly see God in people and situations outside the book of Revelation?

If your 16-year-old daughter comes to you pregnant, are you willing to tell her that she must have this child or face prison time?

None of these questions are comfortable, but they are real. Is our God big enough to handle them and have us talk to others with dignity and respect? Mine is. And for that I’m so grateful.

Conversations

I am being clear with you all because, like my decision to leave a conservative church, I can’t live with pretending to be someone I’m not. While on one hand I can’t stand what the internet has done to our culture (the polarization, the vamping, the lurking) I also am in acceptance of the fact that it’s not going away anytime soon. And so, with that in mind, I felt it important to be have my virtual life match up with my human life. Unlike the Andrea of old, who might have done this out of defense or wanting to fit in, the Andrea of now is doing it from a place of transparency and truth. Right or wrong, this is who I am. Maybe you are in a place I was and need to know that someone else is out there.

Consider this your virtual red carpet to dance in the unknown. To rub shoulders with other people and ask about their stories. To make decisions based on real human beings with hearts, not just theology, and begin to trust your journey.

Services at my new church start at 10. Perhaps you’ll join me at the table.

The Table reminds us that, as brothers and sisters adopted into God’s family and invited to God’s banquet, we’re stuck with each other; we’re family. We might as well make peace. The Table teaches us that, ultimately, faith isn’t about being right or good or in agreement. Faith is about feeding and being fed. – Rachel Held Evans

Happily Ticked Off Tip #53: When you get to know someone’s story, your heart transforms your head and not the other way around. Every time.

My book is available on Amazon. (Note: It’s a special ed journey… your kid doesn’t need to have Tourettes to relate!) Follow me on Twitter@AndreaFrazerWrites or on Facebook.

(Note: It’s a special ed journey… your kid doesn’t need to have Tourettes to relate!) Follow me on Twitter@AndreaFrazerWrites or on Facebook.

I write because it helps me make sense of the world. And it reminds me that there is always, always, something to be grateful for.

As a complainer in transition, it took me a few years of active work to truly get to a place of freedom on this subject. Do I have hard days still? Absolutely. Just ask Tuskany and my friend Annie who hears more play by play than Vin Scully at a Dodger game. But I don’t live in my negativity. I can’t. It’s too… uh… negative. Nope, in addition to gratitude is a chaser of reframing.

Take today for example. It was the first day off from subbing in quite a while. I had sooo much housecleaning to do. But I gave myself an hour to do the basics. And then I forced myself to sit at my desk to work on that pilot.

Ooooh, the office.

I won’t lie. My office still looks like a storage dump for Good Will for a Pinterest fail.

There’s the multi colored ceiling fan from 1987 that Punky Brewster has yet to pick up.

There’s this section of cubed “outgoing” projects flanked by a hot man in uniform and an old set of shutters that has yet to make it’s way to the curb.

There’s this section of photographs needing better storage boxes, a jewelry case desperately in need of organization and my gift wrap/gifts to give/very old dresser inherited from my son yet to be painted.

(Um, yes that IS a set of plastic drawers that houses my scarfs, belts and tights because, you know, the one day I get rid of it I will need to dress as a sixty’s character for school.)

Lest I forget, there is this beautiful secretary’s desk I scored for $40 last year. It only needs to be repainted! And, well, it needs to be combed through and made usable. This means throwing out old Christmas cards and organizing the individual sections with stamps, letters, cards and so on.

(Oooh, do you see my fabulous bathroom in the back? Do you like the “open shelving” I got going on? Don’t be jealous. At some point it’s going to have some amazing cherry curtain swag.)

Now before you think I’m being too self-deprecating, I have to say that I totally love my house. It’s got a 1950’s charm that just makes me smile every time I walk into it. It’s just I have chosen to surrender to the fact that I’m a busy busy busy working mom. I know I will organize this when I have time, but my script and my family are more important. When I sell this sitcom (and I’m determined to) then I can hire a maid and take more time to putter to my satisfaction.

Until then, I have learned the art of staging myself for success. Not unlike selling a home, I clean up what is most important so it’s more attractive for me to work, then gently ignore the rest. This means sweeping up quickly.

It means firing up the diffuser so it smells good and removing any junk from my fainting couch. (Minus my Doc Martins that give me great pleasure.)

And then I look up at those faces above my computer. And I know that, in the end, those connections are worth re-framing the stuff that doesn’t matter.

What are you willing to re-frame in your own life so you can work on your passion?

Happily Ticked Off Tip #52: Re-framing a thought or an action doesn’t keep the challenge from going away. Instead, it keeps you from focusing on it so you can move ahead with more positive actions.

My book is available on Amazon. (Note: It’s a special ed journey… your kid doesn’t need to have Tourettes to relate!) Follow me on Twitter@AndreaFrazerWrites or on Facebook.

I have decided, encouraged by this post by Fractured Faith, and a week of contemplation thanks to glorious… oh so glorious… vacation… that I’m giving up worry.

It really makes sense. I mean, why did I get sober, or why do I believe that this God of mine died and rose from the dead if he wasn’t going to take care of me and all my concerns that really, in the end, I can’t control anyway?

Yup, it’s time to tell my negative thinking to take a hike. I mean, if you looked at me, with all my gazillion friends (I’m blessed) and happy go lucky attitude, you might think I had it all together. And on many fronts I do. But inside there is always a bit of restless discontent or anxiety. If I were a doctor, I’d call it a bit of OCD mixed with a bit of ADHD and a sprinkle of good old fashioned neurotic wiring.

But I’m not a doctor. But I do know this: When I sleep, eat, laugh and connect with my friends, family and God, sometimes my little anxious friend goes away. Hey, I have an idea: Why don’t I just do that! Connect and laugh every day!

Not taking myself so seriously means quite a few things for my ego, though. Poor little ego. This shame thriller doesn’t get to invade my present with its insistence on dwelling on the past or the future. It means:

I’m not going to overthink if I’m a good enough Christian for not believing everything I read hook line and sinker in the Bible. (Yup, I worry about that.)

I’m not going to worry that I like meditating more than I like doing memorized prayers from my childhood. (Yup, I worry about that.)

I’m not going to worry that I’m 20 pounds over the bobble head Los Angeles model range. (Yup I worry about that. Well, no I don’t. The emaciated pre-menopausal crone is so 1996.)

I’m not going to worry that my house isn’t perfectly clean or that I have formica countertops with a burn mark circa Carol Brady 1968. (Yup, I sometimes worry about that.)

What Gives Me the Audacity to Kill Worry You Might Ask?

Because if I can show up to Good Friday services at a church located in a perfectly respectable tree lined suburb where someone found it 100% respectable to put their toilet on the curb next to my car, then I don’t have to be so buttoned up either.

It means I can give myself permission to enjoy pancakes with 3/4 of my family while the other 1/4 sleeps in. (Hey, newsflash: I don’t have to control everything! That even includes using plastic striped plates with an old table cloth and a crusty Maple Syrup container!)

It means just giving in and letting the dog get up on the fainting couch while I book some camping sites with my husband. My very cute husband who, might I add, loves it when I’m not quite so serious also.

It might mean dancing whackily in the kitchen to Maroon 5’s Sugar, eating M and M’s for breakfast on occasion and not getting as much done on my pilot this week as I’d hoped.

But given the incredible outpouring of love, friendship and family I had this vacation, I know that everything is happening exactly as it’s supposed to. A little discipline… a little letting go… and a lot of trusting that this God of mine rose above some oh too serious Pharisees in his day. I can rise above my worry, too, then. I can throw my head back, and laugh.

At the very least I can eat pancakes and, worse case, I don’t feel well? I know of a free toilet not too far away in an emergency.

Happily Ticked Off Tip #42: Give up worrying if you can by just not taking yourself so damn seriously.

My book is available on Amazon. (Note: It’s a special ed journey… your kid doesn’t need to have Tourettes to relate!) Follow me on Twitter@AndreaFrazerWrites or on Facebook.

This post is dedicated to my friend, Gabriella. She helped me get out of a very dark place 25 years ago and now I’m helping her see the light, too. God is so good that way.

Hi all! Well, my big proclamation of “I’m going to write every single day no matter what” went to hell when my long term sub job ended a bit abruptly. Without getting into details, I was “invited” by the principal to have my last day be last Wednesday. It’s a complicated story that leaves me still very much welcome at the school on an individual day to day basis, but long term gigs? Not so much. There was a clash with one student and it was better for all parties that I exit gracefully. And I did.

I’m so relieved in many ways. It was such a challenge to trek an hour each way (that includes my inevitable pit stops) and rush clear across town to get my kids from their school. The principal could not have been nicer about it and, well, I choose to see this as a learning lesson – which it was.

On the other hand, my ego took a major hit. Yeah, all those other posts about getting into gratitude and acceptance? I was a fucking liar. When this happened I was triggered on every level:

Hurt pride

Unworthiness

Shame

Guilt

Financial fear

Lack of faith in new work

Of course all that crap above is nothing but lies. I “know” that none of those things are true. But unlike my kids, I’m not as impervious to rejection. I take it personally. Old wounds that have not quite healed get brought to the surface and bam! Woman down! Woman down!

Thank God I’ve had enough program to feel bummed out but not do the inevitable spiral down into major depression, a case of Trader Joe’s fake oreos and a bucket of Two Buck Chuck. As I love to remind my children when they don’t get what they want, REJECTION IS PROTECTION! (Though technically this term is not true if condoms had factory errors. Then rejection really is not protection at all, but I digress. Oh, vulgarity? It’s the one character defect in my program I am not willing to give up. Just sayin’. I left evangelicalism and I like dirty jokes and the word ‘fuck’ too much. Don’t judge.)

Good News!

The good news is that I didn’t defend myself to the principal. I made an error, I admitted it, and all was well. I subbed at the school the following Friday.

Oh, Wait… There’s Bad News!

The bad news is that those shame gremlins run deep. They might only come out in the dark, but they are a pain the ass and their fur gets all over your previously cleaned house and scare the dog. It’s annoying.

Tomorrow is a new day. Just like today, I’m taking it to be by myself… less to ruminate and more to relax, sleep in, nurse a cold and go for a small hike. (Though of course I did indeed churn and churn today. I do Locked Brain so well! Even at UCSD I received an A+ in Persevaration, thank you very much!)

My new goal? Rest a bit more and think about what I want to do with my life. Is it really to take the “safe” route of teaching, only to find out that it’s not really that safe after all? I don’t know, but God does, and for tonight, with a cold dripping down my nose and the prospect of watching Voyager with my husband, that’s enough.

Happily Ticked Off Tip #37: Rejection is protection. Instead of seeing where you’re at fault, try getting into gratitude that God has something better. He always does.

My book is available on Amazon. (Note: It’s a special ed journey… your kid doesn’t need to have Tourettes to relate!) Follow me on Twitter@AndreaFrazerWrites or on Facebook.

Every day in my classes I learn more than the 200 kids teach me. I learn that if I don’t want to resent something or someone, I must always (not 99% but ALWAYS) accept the challenging situation. It’s a lesson in submitting to what is, not what I wish it could be.

Yesterday’s lesson was in the form of a 150 pound hairy eighth grader who threw a basketball in frustration when I kicked him out of my class (after asking him to be quiet… then moving his seat… then giving him a personal work plan to help him stay on track… and then having the audacity to tell him to “rethink his actions next door” after he got up from his chair again and stole someone’s ear buds).

Today was a new day so I reminded him before class, “Let’s start over!” He agreed. Then he proceeded to play poker at his table rather than sketching. This was followed by playing loud rap music and then texting on his phone after I moved him yet again. (I’m sure tomorrow I’ll get the memo that my class is actually supposed to be an ‘Introduction to Partying.” I’ll bring the punch on Monday.)

I suppose I don’t get enough of these lessons at school, because tonight I found out that someone opened a case against me on Ebay for not sending a jacket quickly enough.

Ah, crap.

I had totally forgotten to check Ebay with all my classroom activities, but that wasn’t the buyer’s fault. They just wanted their item! And so, like what I did to my eighth grader, they opened a case.

The thing is, though, unlike my student, I had communicated my part in the error and told them I would ship the jacket. Which I did. They even received the jacket.

But that didn’t keep them from letting go of their resentment. They wanted a full refund. What could I do? I looked at my part more closely which was… in addition to shipping the jacket late to begin with, I didn’t ship it until late Monday after saying I’d ship it early morning.

Prior to getting sober and my spiritual practice – which henceforth will be known as My Master’s Class – I’d have seen every damn thing wrong with this buyer’s case against me “Lighten up!” I’d scoff. “It’s only $4 fucking ninety nine… BIG DEAL!”

But that voice inside me, which doesn’t curse… who enjoys tacos as much as I do… who I refer to as the Holy Spirit, whispered, “Andrea, child, forgetting to mail something isn’t going to get you cynical. But continuing to defend it will.”

What could I do? I didn’t want to resent the buyer resenting me, so I did the only thing I could think to do in my Resentment/Submit/Refund formula.

I hit “Submit” on Paypal and “Refunded” him.

The bad news? Some schmo in Southbay has a perfectly lovely faux velvet Prince jacket for their toddler for free because of my error.

Not being angry and letting it go? I’d have refunded a hundred bucks for that. ($101? That’d be too much. I’d rather stay pissed a few more days. But I have a big weekend coming up. I’ll take the serenity win now.)

Happily Ticked Off Tip #33: Submit to Win. You’ll be Refunded in Serenity and suffer zero Resentments. Or be right and burn. It’s up to you.

My book is available on Amazon. (Note: It’s a special ed journey… your kid doesn’t need to have Tourettes to relate!) Follow me on Twitter@AndreaFrazerWrites or on Facebook.

In yesterday’s post I spoke of a student who leaves me letters on my desk. In one she told me her grade was unfair. I wrote her back, telling her why it was not. Then she wrote me another one which really blew me away:

Dear Ms. Frizzle,

Okay, I do not do my sketching in my sketch book because, well, I didn’t want to tell you but… I’m POOR. I do not want you to buy me one like you offered because then it would stand out from the rest of class and that would embarrass me soooo… I can’t do my work.

There.

Student.

If I saw this story on BuzzFeed or Up, complete with tear jerking music and photos, I’d have all the feels.

In this case, I found myself rolling my eyes. 1) I had bought 40 sketch books for my many students who could not afford it or didn’t have resources to get one.

2) She HAS a notebook! I know because I have the same one has hers, courtesy of our local Dollar Store, and I thought we had swapped them by accident. I was annoyed to go running all over campus on my break to track her butt down, only to realize my composition book was sitting on my desk all along.

You know… in plain sight.

The moral of the story is this: I have in my class, in plain sight, a student who is not the norm. She finds it easier to make stuff up to get sympathy then to take responsibility for her work. In addition, she clearly has some special needs. Both facts don’t excuse laziness, but both deserve empathy. Because somewhere in between the mess of learning issues and home issues is a kid who is scared and reaching out for attention. I can’t fix her, but I can fix my own lazy and irresponsible traits by trying my best to give her loving but firm feedback.

The End Is Near… I Think

This gig might end April 2. On one hand I’ll be grateful to have jobs closer to where I live. On the other, I’ve grown rather fond of these rag tag kids. I have gotten used to their boisterous talking, confessions about boyfriend issues, ridiculous outbursts (duck honks? oh yeah) and artwork (all equal parts horrific and genius.) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I have learned way more from them than they have learned from me. And today, despite being so tired I could pass out on this public school computer stand, I’m grateful.

Just yesterday I was saying how I meditate every day. If I don’t, I’m a mess.

Today I didn’t meditate. And shock of all shocks, I was a mess this morning.

I gotta admit it, I’m TIRED. I can’t keep on top of the waves of life that are rocking me these days. Work? I can do that. Kids to doctors? I can do that. But all the other stuff like remembering market items and birthdays… being on time for meetings or slowing down with my kids to really see them in the morning and not just rush rush rush while being cranky that my husband had the audacity to fix the pockets in my jeans so I don’t look like a vintage homeless giant? I’m kind of losing the game there.

Because I don’t allow myself to get into victim mode anymore, my mornings don’t define my entire day. There’s always an opportunity to start over. How? Hint: It doesn’t involve getting other people to behave. The only way for that to happen is to right size oneself. And the only way right size wonky, upside down thinking is to get in gratitude and be of service.

I’m no mathematician, but that’s a formula that has kept me from being homicidal or suicidal for the past year and so I gladly share it with you.

Ex: Today one of my students was sitting at my desk doing a big fat nothing. “Why do you let her sit at your desk?” you might ask. The answer: “Because she’s a bit on the fringe. I keep an eye on her. I make sure she’s doing work. Which, sometimes she doesn’t. And by “sometimes” I mean “often.” Clearly this is an IEP kid who needs some extra nudging. In a class of 40 with no aid, this isn’t easy. I can only offer lack of judgement and encouragement when the energy of the class transitions from savage ingrates to mediocre feral.

Knowing her wiring, and adding in the fact that she is not spitting, licking the desktop or throwing a basketball from one table to the next (yeah, that happened once) I gave her a passing grade during progress reports. So you can imagine my surprise when she left a homemade envelope on my note. It had more staples than guards at San Quentin. On it, in my black sharpie (which she did not ask permission to use, of course) read the words “MS. FRIZZLE. READ THIS.IN PRIVATE. NOW.” It was decorated with very sad cartoon drawings which, truthfully, were way better constructed than this awkward art teacher could have done. But I digress.

On the inside was a letter that read:

Dear Ms. Frizzle. I am very very upset with you. I got a B in this class and CLEARLY I deserved an A. I am very mad at you and want to tell you how WRONG this is. L.

What could I do? I wrote her back on the same strip of paper. I sealed it with more staples, hoping they wouldn’t poke her little paws and bleed all over my freshly washed desk. It read:

Dear L: I am so glad you took the time to write me! You spell very well! I am surprised that you are sad with your B, given that 25% of your grade is participation (you do not participate) 25% is your vision board (you did not complete this) 25% is your test (you have not taken any so that was an automatic A – Congrats on your easy win!) and 25% is behavior (you rarely take out your work after multiple prompts.) When you add this up you technically deserve an F in my class. Are you willing to change some habits, and your perception, to bring your B to an A by June? Ms. Frizzle.

The responding note I received blew me away. In a good way. And it couldn’t have happened had I not switched my own perspective. Check in tomorrow to find out!

Happily Ticked Off Tip #31:When you get centered, other people behave. It’s really that simple!

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Are you ready to stop blaming other people for what only you can do which is to center yourself? If so, sign your name to commit to the journey. (For me it was commit or be committed. I’m glad I took the first step.) Let’s support each other!

My book is available on Amazon. (Note: It’s a special ed journey… your kid doesn’t need to have Tourettes to relate!) Follow me on Twitter@AndreaFrazerWrites or on Facebook.

So you’ll be tired of me saying this (or you won’t… you’ll just leave and only people interested in this topic will stay) but I pray and meditate daily. Faith isn’t something I just kind of have in the background. Instead, God is my everything. I don’t build God around my life anymore. I build my life around God.

This is not to say I’m perfect or think I have it all figured out. I do not. As my friend Ava likes to remind me, “I just don’t like to feel pain. I’ll avoid it at all costs!”This means I must take my medicine. When I take these pills in the form of a few simple steps to get out of self (hence prayer and meditation) I have a little space in between to respond rather than react. It means:

I don’t have to flip off the sixteen year old driving single in the carpool lane when I’m running late to work and can’t, thanks to my damn conscious, do the same thing.

I don’t have to scream at 200 middle schoolers who just WON’T. STOP.TALKING simply because I was having a bad day and didn’t feel like dealing with their incessant “Can I use the bathrooms?” and “I can’t find my composition books” and “Why did I get a ‘D’ in this class… I mean… I don’t do anything, but I thought you liked me, Ms. Frizzle?!!!”

I can calmly listen to my husband growl at me when I’ve cut him off in conversation (when I swear to God I thought he was done with that topic 10 blocks ago) and just say, “Okay, I’m sorry.”

Prayer and meditation keep me from living in the What If’s. It allows me to live in faith, not fear. To quote my sponsor, “Fear is not a great spiritual advisor.” Fear keeps us looking to the worst case scenario. Faith keeps us in the moment. And in the moment, if we stay centered and breathe, it’s nearly impossible to not see God. I saw him today in:

That reckless teenage driver. “Dear God, keep him safe. That will be my boy in a few months.”

Those obnoxious annoying blessed middle schoolers. “Dear God, how wonderful that they have so much energy. May I learn to channel it and not squash their joy.”

My husband. He is dealing with a terrible personal loss. Maybe I wasn’t listening as closely as I could have been. How can I be of service and not make this about me?

I am not a saint. But I’m also not a victim. And this means I get to fire bad counselors. That means “See ya later, Fear! Your services are no longer needed.”

And guess what? If you relate to this statement, I give you permission to fire your advisor also. Let’s freelance life together!

Most of you have probably heard about the bribery to college admissions that’s got people like Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin facing prison time. I’m already waiting for the Shameless and Fuller House Memes to surface.

Oh wait, here’s one!

On one hand, my stomach dropped when I heard the news. It’s so unfair to the kids who really do work their butts off to get into these top schools.

On the other hand, I don’t really care. I’m one of those moms who doesn’t buy into the whole college application freak out thing. The truth: My son is a Sophomore and we have not researched one school (though we said we would). I don’t know how or where he’ll take an SAT and I’m not overly worried about him getting a coach for it. We’ll start researching in a few months, look at JC’s and go from there. I have enough faith in my kid to know he’ll land somewhere! (Mom brag: He went from not amazing grades last year to straight A’s, 1 B+ and he’s taking Japanese this summer. This GPA did not happen with me bugging him. I literally have zero idea what he’s learning in school. The hard work was last year when, after letting him fail, I made him meet with me every day at 4PM to go over his organization. I knew it would be a pain for me, but it would ultimately put him in the driver’s seat. These same tools are what will get him on the road to college one way or another.) So, back to that:

Why Don’t I Care About College – And a Caveat

I want my kids to do the best they can with their lives. But I’ve seen enough A-Personality neurotic kids to know that if a kid doesn’t learn to appreciate the success of who they are, no school is going to make a difference. They will just get there, not be happy, and anxiously climb up to the next thing. And then they’ll graduate and anxiously work toward a job, and then a promotion, and then a mate, and kids, all the while not really knowing why they are striving so hard.

No, that’s not what life is about. Beyond a shadow of a doubt I believe the best thing I can do is guide them toward their path and let them be self-confident people who are content with what is, not what is not.

Don’t You Care At All, Andrea?

Of course I care. Ask Tuskany. I stress about my decision to let go. But in the end, I will always choose to let go. I do so, sometimes with fists clenched onto the last bit of rope, because I’m raising them to be adults that make their own decisions, not little puppets I write checks for to look good for the world. (Look where that landed the culprits in this latest scandal?)

I feel so strongly about this topic because I was that go get ’em kid. I got the straight A’s. The college. The TV job. The house. The marriage. The kids. My outsides were great. But inside I was a wreck. It wasn’t until I broke down the construct of what I thought I needed to be happy that I was able to be, truly, happy.

Tonight I’m going to go downstairs and eat some soup. I’m going to remind my son to get off the video games. I’m going to compliment my daughter for all the auditions she went on. She’ll tell me about the groups she landed, the ones she did not. And then we’ll go to bed. Life these days is busy busy busy… but it’s simple. It comes down to, “Are who you are in your soul enough?” When the answer is yes – and it always is – there isn’t a thing to worry about.

Zero fucks given. It’s a model for livin’.

(Hey, I think I just wrote a country song! Maybe I can make a million dollars and bribe Harvard to take my kids!)

Happily Ticked Off Tip #25:When we teach our kids that who they are is more important than where they go to college, we are giving them the best education they can get: To be learn to be happy with what they have, not what they do not.

My book is available on Amazon. (Note: It’s a special ed journey… your kid doesn’t need to have Tourettes to relate!) Follow me on Twitter@AndreaFrazerWrites or on Facebook.

I was much calmer today thanks to meditation. Because of my time spent in quiet stillness, first thing in the morning, my whole day passed without me being either suicidal or homicidal. #yayformeandmyfamily

All sarcasm aside, I’ve never wanted to kill anyone or myself, but when I’m wound really tight, I’m killing the joy in life. Starting my day with some still breathing, readings and prayer, helped me move from one task to the next with way more ease than yesterday.

God Calling is the devotional I read. I love it because it’s just one scripture verse per page per day. Sometimes there is an old hymn verse thrown in for good measure.

I also read this every day.

It talks about acceptance. For this control freak, acceptance is everything. If I think I am running the show, I am basically saying that I know better than God. I do not know better than God. We are all God’s kids. Reading this reminds me to keep my trap shut and trust that if someone wants my opinion they will ask. (That concept, my friends, has been the absolute hardest thing for me to change. Lucky for this lady, when I pray and meditate each day, God does it for me.)

“Meditation Is Not For Me!”

One of my readers, The Bookworm, commented, “I’m sure meditating is good for the soul. I’ve never been able to do it myself, I feel like I have too much nervous energy but for me, it’s running. That’s my form of meditation.”

I say whatever you need to do to not be a lunatic you do that!

As I have mentioned before, I have no real structure or expectations to my meditation routine. I don’t sit up. I drink coffee. And the closest I’ve ever been to Nirvana is to be interrupted by an LAUSD automated system telling me my sub job for the day has been canceled and I can crawl back in the covers with the crazy pitbull mix and sleep in.

I will add that while intention in life means nothing without action to back it up, intention in meditation is different. For me, it simply means, “I don’t have all the answers. Here is some time to get still because God does. Period.”

Happily Ticked Off Tip #23: Meditation doesn’t have to involve an ashram and a yogi. It can be any time you set aside to allow someone other than you to break through your ego and run the show so you don’t have to. PS: Ego stands for “Edging God Out.” That’s good, huh?

My book is available on Amazon. (Note: It’s a special ed journey… your kid doesn’t need to have Tourettes to relate!) Follow me on Twitter@AndreaFrazerWrites or on Facebook.